A visit to the Stasi Museum in Lichtenberg is a reasonably well known thing to do (http://www.stasimuseum.de/). What seems to be less common is to join a tour to see the actual Stasi Archives.
Tours of the archives are run on the first Tuesday of each month and are conducted in German. English tours are only run for group of 10 or more, by special appointment.
We were a group of four and I contacted the representatives who said we could join a group of Dutch students.
So we went with the Dutchies.
Now, I knew the Stasi was a big deal and that they probably had a pretty big building (from what I've heard and seen in movies). What I didn't realise is that they actually had a huge complex, like the size of a small town, of their own!
Due to being in a rush (for a toilet break), we went into the wrong building, which is the Stasi museum.
We went to the right place and joined our tour with the students. We had a introduction lecture which informed us mostly of what we already knew. An interesting bit of trivia was that the buildings on the busy Frankfurter Allee that look like apartments were actually Stasi buildings - just disguised as apartments. Who knew they would be so sneaky? These days the whole buildings are empty.
With the introductory lecture over we we taken by the tour guide to see the actual archives. Oooooh.
A security guy followed us around. One of the students asked the guide 'Don't you trust us?' The guide answered that he was a precaution, protection for her and the archives and she also mentioned that sometimes journalists come on the tour and try to get unauthorised access to the records. Hence the guy.
In one of the archive rooms were racks of bundled files. These were bundled by the activists that stormed the archives in 1989 when the Stasi officers tried to destroy everything. They took all the records from the offices and bundled them up. Now the archivists are trying to sort through it all and make sense of it.
A fascinating part of the tour is the index cards. Millions of them in special mechanised machines, that reference coded information to a file which then connects to some other information....
This coded information was explained to us through some 'blown up' versions of the index cards. A deliberately complicated system so that no one individual knew all of the information.
The guide made a point at this stage of the tour about being careful about what we put out on the internet about ourselves. It is something to think about. At the archives we could see physically what the Stasi had collected on people. But these days, with electronics and deliberate and passive surveillance, it seems we are living in even more dangerous times - we just don't always know who is watching us! Something to think about.
At one point we had a chance to look through the files of an informer. We really didn't have enough time to look thoroughly through these documents.
And this was around where the tour ended. When we came out of the last archive room. And to my surprise...and unblocked Paternoster lift!!!
I wouldn't have asked if I could ride it as I would have assumed that the answer was no. Thankfully, with the brash-fullness of youth, one of the students asked if they could ride it. Without hesitation the guide said we could. So one by one we did...weeeeeeee!
Now...I have read up on these things before and knew that you could travel 'up and over' or 'down and under' without trouble. It's one of the cool quirks of the machines. BUT...I also know a bit of German and got cold feet as we approached the 'up and over' point (where you switch from going up, to going down, without getting out.
The picture below says in German, Further travel is not dangerous. The problem is the word dangerous is Gefahrlich....and not dangerous is Gefahrlos. The sign came and went too quickly for me to see which one was written. Dangerous, not dangerous - we got out. I'm not as bad ass as I thought!
Outside of the lift we saw the other students that were doing the 'up and over' coming back down, reassuring us that all was safe. So as soon as an empty car came by we hopped in and went 'up and over' ....Weeeee :)
Only after we got out did I see the sign behind us in the car that said the whole thing was not dangerous...duh.
And so the Paternoster was a definite highlight of the tour! However, its probably likely that as of 1 June 2015 people won't be able to ride it anymore :(
The excitement of the Paternoster had to some extent made light of the otherwise quite serious reason we were there.
I tried to refocus myself and think about the Stasi, so took this picture on the way out...stairs and protests in the building.
But still, I was pretty excited about riding the Paternoster!
Stasi Archive tour info:
http://www.bstu.bund.de/EN/Archives/PublicToursOfArchives/_node.html
Notes:
Tours in English are by appointment, for groups of 10 or more and are free of charge. Tours in German take place on the first Tuesday of every month (except January) from 5pm to 7pm.
Address:
Ruschestraße 103
10365 Berlin (Lichtenberg)
Nearest U-Bahn:
U5 - Magdalanenstraße.
